Climate Science

Climate Science essentially provides the necessary information and platform from which to develop various mitigation and adaptation responses. ACDI affiliated centres and researchers are running climate models and collecting climate data, which provide an increasingly clearer picture of what the future climate may look like. The climate models are also being downscaled to be relevant and usable on a regional and even local scale. This growing database of climate science is ensuring that projections of the future climate are accessible to a large number of users. Whilst there will always be a certain degree of uncertainty, effective climate science can be used to make informed decisions as we move into and plan for an uncertain future.

In this seminar Res Altwegg, of the Department of Statistics at UCT will speak on some of the latest research that his collaborators and he carried out about modelling species distributions when detection is not perfect.

The African Climate and Development Initiative (ACDI) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) is offering a number of full and partial scholarships to fund the completion of ACDI's MSc/MPhil degree specialising in Climate Change and Sustainable Development in 2017.The African Climate and Development Initiative (ACDI) at the University of Cape Town (UCT) is offering a number of full and partial scholarships to fund the completion of ACDI's MSc/MPhil degree specialising in Climate Change and Sustainable Development in 2017.

The “Problems and Solutions for Climate Change Resilience and Adaptation in Mozambique” research project was formulated in response to a call for proposals circulated by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Mozambique.

The exposure to an international arena on climate sciences was overwhelming at first and then inspiring (13 650 people from 109 countries). It was a pleasure attending sessions and talks at the European Geosciences General Assembly and seeing what other universities and academics are focusing on in their research.

This study aims to explore the utility of anticipatory adaptation to climate variability and related livelihood sensitivities in rural African contexts using the case of Mbire district situated in the mid-Zambezi valley region of Zimbabwe. The provision of decadal climate information (up to ten years), as part of an anticipatory adaptation package, is at the centre of analysis.

Bioclimatic envelope models are widely used to describe changes in climatically suitable areas for species under future climate scenarios. Climate change metrics are applied independently of species data to characterize the spatio-temporal dynamics of climate, and have also been used as indicators of the exposure of species to climate change. Here, we investigate whether these two approaches provide qualitatively similar indications about where biodiversity is potentially most exposed to climate change.